Show Me the Way

This one was a really simple one we took and idea from a sign down in birch bay.

Light the way

What we did different on this one is that this one was going to be out side in the light and we didn't want to use hot glue, we also did more painting on this one.

•  First we had a piece of plywood 2 feet by 6 feet. 
• We painted it white. 
• We drew the curves on the piece of plywood. 
• We painted every second curve red. 
• We painted the outline black.

• We put a frame around it with 1 inch by 2 inch boards to stop it from warping and make it more rigid.
• We drilled one big hole in each of the stripes so we could weave the wire in and out of the board
• Then we put little holes for putting tie straps through the board to hold the wire
•  We created a print out of the top of the lighthouse and we used this design to help us figure out where the rest of the holes go for holding the EL-wire together.

 

• Using the tie straps we held together the El-wire onto the board to make the out line of the light house. 
• We had some trouble with the EL-wire in the corners of the light house.

•  We used wire coat hangers to mount the yellow wire to the board so its not touching any of the other wire. 

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• Next we hooked the sequencer up so that the lights would go one at a time but they ended up going to fast. M is going to order some parts that will help fix it 

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Thatscoolwire.com

We won a contest on thatscoolwire.com and we got to pick out $200 worth of stuff. Look what we got. My favorites are the gloves, the egg shaped things, the ice cubes, the smiley faces and of course the wire.

Freezies

I have never been able to find diabetic freezies. We got some cherry sugar free snow cone syrup. Then me and M were trying to figure out a way to make freeze containers. So then my mom heard us and said that we had a vacuum sealer. We made a inch wide bag to put the syrup into. Then we filled the bag with syrup and placed it into the freezer. I finally got to eat the freeze and it was good!

T Shirt Press

Look what we found at a garage sale today. Guess what we are going to do this summer.

Inspiration

These photos are some inspiration for new projects:

El Palm

We've had a plywood cutout of a palm tree on our porch for a few years now.  Since this is where the EL wire tiki is going to go, it time to update the palm tree.

This project varies from the past project in a couple of ways:

1. We are putting the el wire around the periphery of the plywood rather than on the surface.
2. We are simply stapling the wire to the plywood.

We are using 5 mm el wire for this project, so we can use standard round staples for stapling things like telephone wire.

We are using two colors of el wire for the project, yellow for trunk and green for the leaves. We hid the join between the two between the trunk and the leaves.

 

Contrary to what we said in our opening statement we  chose to have some of the el wire on the front.  This required some tight bending, so we had to pull out the heat gun.

Conclusion

I am very please about how this turned out.  The work involved was minimal.  The effect was wonderful.  The plywood blocks the light towards the center giving in a neat effect.

Bar Sign - Conclusion

Ok, we finished the bar sign and put it up.  It looks great.

Summary

The sign tuned out great, but it was a lot of extra work for not a log extra result.  I don't think I would make one this way again.

1. We hoped the raised platform for the el wire would it a better effect with reflections from the read of the wire.  It didn't make any difference.
2. Wiring all the individual arrows was a lot of work.  It is debatable weather we should do it this way or just have 4 pieces snake all the way through.  I guess it depends upon how much your time is worth and how you pay for the el wire.

Bar Sign Part 3 - the el wire

• The arrows will  look like they are moving by using a by for sequencer.  Because we are using  a 4 step sequencer, every forth arrow will be connected.
• To save on about 24 feet of el wire, we wired each arrow separately rather than stitching them together with one piece of el wire.
• Each segment was terminated with a pair of wires (under heat shrink) on one end  and heat shrink on the other end. This sign will be exposed to the weather, so we also covered the ends with silicon before applying the heat shrink.
• note: we used clear  silicone because  we found white silicon (or caulk)  was slightly conductive so the wire would not light up if we used it.
• The el wire arrows were attached to the platform with 3 tie straps each.  Black ones on the end and a clear (white) one at the tip of the arrow.
• every forth arrow was wired together
• The wire between each arrow was covered in black heat shrink so it would be less visible against the black background.

• The letters were covered with blue el wire.  Between letters and areas where we did not want the el wire lit up, the el wire was covered with black heat shrink.

•  We now connect the invertors
• As this sign will be outside in the elements, we placed the inverters and connections inside an inverted peanut butter jar.

• note: the water will run down the side of the jar and collected in the lid, so the items inside the jar should be lifted off the bottom (lid) and the lid should be drilled with holes to drain the water.

Bar Sign Part 2

After completed the sign backing we started the raised platforms for the el wire.  This ended up being a bit more complicated than what m felt comfortable with so I (M) ended up doing this part of the project my myself.

• To create the platforms we used metal coat hangers.  

• First we bent the coat hanger into the shape of the letter.
• To control the spacing between the platform and the plywood backer we soldered a washer to the coat hanger.  For the washer we used a penny drilled with a hole slightly larger than the coat hanger.
• Each standoff had a hole drill in the backer.

• To keep the distance between the washer and the platform consistent we used a piece of 3/4 plywood with a larger hole in it to support the washer.  We then soldered the washer to the coat hanger with about 1 inch of coat hanger sticking through the washer.

• For the arrow we created a set of tracks to support the arrows then soldered the arrows to the track.
• First a drawing of the arrow and tracks were taped to the plywood backing.  
• The tracks were laid out with a support ever 12-18 inches.
• Then each individual arrow was soldered to the track.  The coat hanger arrows were slightly longer than what the el wire arrows were going to be.

• When the platforms were finished we removed the drawing,  painted the platforms  black or white and mounted them to the board (holes were drilled for each of the standoffs).  To hold them in place the coat hanger that went through the hole was bent over on the back..